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Rapidly create and deploy powerful .NET applications that integrate with Sybase databases.

LINQ to Sybase Data



LINQ offers versatile querying capabilities within the .NET Framework (v3.0+), offering a straightforward method for programmatic data access through CData ADO.NET Data Providers. In this article, we demonstrate the use of LINQ to retrieve information from the Sybase Data Provider.

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Sybase via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Sybase. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

  1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
  2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
  3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData Sybase Data Source".
  4. Enter your data source connection information.

    To connect to Sybase, specify the following connection properties:

    • Server: Set this to the name or network address of the Sybase database instance.
    • Database: Set this to the name of the Sybase database running on the specified Server.

    Optionally, you can also secure your connections with TLS/SSL by setting UseSSL to true.

    Sybase supports several methods for authentication including Password and Kerberos.

    Connect Using Password Authentication

    Set the AuthScheme to Password and set the following connection properties to use Sybase authentication.

    • User: Set this to the username of the authenticating Sybase user.
    • Password: Set this to the username of the authenticating Sybase user.

    Connect using LDAP Authentication

    To connect with LDAP authentication, you will need to configure Sybase server-side to use the LDAP authentication mechanism.

    After configuring Sybase for LDAP, you can connect using the same credentials as Password authentication.

    Connect Using Kerberos Authentication

    To leverage Kerberos authentication, begin by enabling it setting AuthScheme to Kerberos. See the Using Kerberos section in the Help documentation for more information on using Kerberos authentication.

    You can find an example connection string below: Server=MyServer;Port=MyPort;User=SampleUser;Password=SamplePassword;Database=MyDB;Kerberos=true;KerberosKDC=MyKDC;KerberosRealm=MYREALM.COM;KerberosSPN=server-name

    Below is a typical connection string:

    User=myuser;Password=mypassword;Server=localhost;Database=mydatabase;Charset=iso_1;
  5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting SybaseEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
  6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:

SybaseEntities context = new SybaseEntities(); var productsQuery = from products in context.Products select products; foreach (var result in productsQuery) { Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Id); }

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.